Lord Cavendish Returns (19 page)

When he
didn’t appear to have heard her, she dipped several strips of cloth
into the bowl of warm water and began to dab at his temple. As soon
as she touched his skin, one hand shot up and captured her wrist in
a hold that was firm but gentle. His bleary eyes opened and he
glared up at her for a moment before the sinister threat vanished
and was replaced with something warmer, and considerably
friendlier. The change in him was so swift, so unnerving, that the
hand that began to dab at his temple trembled slightly.

“
Arrabella.”

“
I didn’t mean to startle you,” she replied somewhat
defensively and frowned at him. Which man was the real Harper
Lawton? She kept seeing shadows of a much harder, more ruthless
man, yet he was quickly covered by someone who was considerably
more amenable.

“
I am sorry, I am just wary. Have you locked the
door?”

Arrabella shook her head. “Mrs Able is due back in a minute.
She has gone to send a lad to fetch Angus.”

Harper
bit back a curse and focused his attention on staying awake. Not
that he would be much use if anyone did creep into the house for
nefarious purposes, but he would hate to pass out on her and wake
up to find that she had been hurt in some way while he had been
unconscious. He was busy trying to get his thoughts into some
semblance of order when the rattle of the front door heralded the
arrival of Mrs Able, who was breathing heavily when she appeared in
the doorway.

“
On his way. He shouldn’t be long now.”

“
Can you make some sweet tea?”

Mrs Able
nodded and took a moment to drape a blanket over Harper’s knees
before she added another log to the fire and hurried
out.

Arrabella rinsed the cloths and continued to dab the blood
away. Although the cut on his head wasn’t large, it had formed into
a large goose egg that was starting to turn dark
already.

“
How long have you been like this?” She stood back to scowl
down at him. “I mean, when did it happen?”

Harper
frowned at that. “I went to see Joseph.”

“
Joseph did this?” She demanded loudly. It seemed so unlike
Joseph that she wondered if Harper had it right, and was relieved
when Harper immediately began to shake his head only to wince and
groan as his head screamed in protest and stars began to dance
behind his eyelids again.

“
I went to see Joseph,” he whispered. “Then went to the church
in Moldton. Someone followed me there.”

“
Moldton? What did you go to Moldton church for?”

She
strongly suspected that Harper wasn’t a deeply religious person
and, with the register still missing, she could see no reason for
him to return there. Had he been planning to search the ante room
again?

“
I don’t know,” he mumbled.

Arrabella frowned and turned to Mrs Able, who returned with a
tray of tea things. “He needs to lie down,” she announced
flatly.

“
If he sits there he is going to fall over, and that’s a fact.
If he can stay awake long enough, let’s see if we can get him
upstairs,” Mrs Able declared. She plonked the tray down on the
table and rolled the sleeves of her apron up as though she was
going to arm-wrestle him.

“
Harper?”

“
I heard,” Harper whispered. He wanted to object; to assure
them that he was fine, but in reality he knew that he wasn’t. There
was damned little he could do about the fierce pounding in his
head, and he felt as weak as a newborn baby. With the ladies on
either side of him, he launched out of his chair and felt the world
swim alarmingly. It galled him to have the ladies help him up the
stairs but there was little he could do except watch where he put
his feet and try not to completely humiliate himself and fall flat
on his face.

The
softness of the bed seemed to embrace him and felt heavenly as he
lay down. For the first time since his attacker had struck, Harper
felt the world begin to settle.

“
Arrabella? Keep the front door locked.” He included Mrs Able
in his instruction and watched the question enter the older woman’s
eyes, but she didn’t ask and disappeared out of the room with
Arrabella in hot pursuit.

He
wasn’t alone for long. His eyelids had started to droop when he
became aware of the flurry of movement beside him. It took a lot of
effort for him to turn his head and look at her and, when he did,
he immediately wished he hadn’t because pain exploded again and
made the world start to dim.

“
I am sorry, Arrabella. I will get out of here the first
chance I get, I promise.”

“
I am glad that you managed to get here without ending up in a
ditch, and you can stay as long as you need to. You are hardly in a
fit state to go anywhere, now are you?”

He hated
to admit it but he wasn’t, and felt himself drifting off to sleep
while she continued to dab at the wound on his temple.

Angus
arrived a short time later and took the stairs two at a time. He
examined his brother and declared that he would have to remain in
bed for at least a couple of days. The wound had been bandaged but
Harper was likely to be in discomfort for a while. Throughout it
all, Harper remained fast asleep and didn’t even appear to have
noticed that Angus had arrived.

“
I am sorry but I just don’t know what happened. He was
mumbling a little and didn’t seem to know where he was,” Arrabella
sighed as she led Angus back down the stairs toward the front
door.

“
I will stay as well, just in case the master takes ill in the
night. I don’t want Arrabella to have to deal with him by herself,”
Mrs Able assured him.

“
Quite,” Angus replied. “I could arrange for him to be moved
to Moldton, but it will take a couple of hours to muster the men to
carry him.”

“
No, it is alright, really. It would seem a little churlish
for us to insist that he is removed from the vicarage while he is
so poorly. Leave him where he is, I am sure that Mrs Able and I can
look after him.” She offered Angus some tea but he declined citing
the need to return to his surgery full of patients, whom he had
just abandoned.

As she
showed him to the door however, she had to ask. “Can you tell me,
doctor, have you seen any strangers in the village of
late?”

“
Strangers? Why, no. I don’t believe that I have. Why do you
ask?”

“
Because someone has stolen a parish register that Harper
needs. I don’t know if one of the villagers took it for something
and didn’t tell us, or if it has actually been stolen but it is
missing.”

“
Good Lord. Now he has been hit on the head.”

Arrabella looked worriedly at the door. “He keeps telling me
to lock the door.”

“
Then it is best if you leave him where he is Arrabella. You
need him here right now, especially if there is someone on the
loose who doesn’t want him getting hold of that register,” Angus
shook his head and gave her a warning look. “Good luck. He needs
bed rest but, if I know my brother, once he sleeps this off he is
going to be up and about in spite of the pain. I will make a few
discrete enquiries to see if anyone has been acting strangely of
late,” he sighed as he made his way toward the door. “If I find
anything out I will let you know. In the meantime, please make sure
that my brother doesn’t get up again for the rest of the day. You
have my permission to tie him to the bed if you need to, but he
needs to rest.” He included Mrs Able in the warning and nodded to
the ladies before he left the house.

CHAPTER
TEN

When he
woke up later that night, Harper felt considerably better. His head
still throbbed mercilessly but he was feeling much stronger and the
world had stopped spinning. He yawned and winced when his stomach
rumbled loudly. It was already dark outside but he had no idea if
it was still the same day, the following day or the day after that.
A quick glance around the room confirmed that he was in the
vicarage. He could distinctly recall having a conversation with
Arrabella, but couldn’t remember what was discussed. When his
stomach rumbled again, he left the bed, and went in search of some
food, and some answers to his questions, the first one being; just
who the heck had taken his clothes off and dressed him in this
awful nightgown?

By the
time he got to the kitchen he was feeling considerably more
confident that his attacker had inflicted nothing more than a flesh
wound.

“
Do you have some of that for me?” He drawled when he spotted
Arrabella at the table, pouring some warm milk into a
cup.

She
squealed and turned around. Her eyes widened at the sight of him
standing wrapped in a blanket in the doorway behind her. Apart from
the large white cloth that was wrapped around his head, he looked
wonderfully fit and healthy. Even the colour had returned to his
cheeks. Rather than answer she merely stared at him blankly for a
moment before his words registered.

“
How do you feel?” It felt strangely intimate to have him so
close and dressed in nothing but a nightgown and
blanket.

“
Much better thank you, although I am hungry, and that milk
smells wonderful.”

“
Why don’t you take a seat in the sitting room and I will
bring it through?” Mrs Able suggested from behind him.

Harper
turned toward her with a slightly abashed look. “I am sorry for
turning your life into chaos.” He waved a hand down his attire. “I
take it that I have you to thank for this?” To his consternation,
Mrs Able shook her head.

“
Your brother, Robert, dropped in with Joseph and they brought
a few things over to you. They said that they would look after the
horse and come back and see you in the morning. I must say that I
am glad you are up and about. You must be starving. We did bring
you some soup earlier but you were fast asleep and it seemed a
shame to disturb you. Go and sit down now, both of you. I will
bring you a tray in a thrice, Harper.”

Arrabella knew that to argue with Mrs Able would get her
nowhere. The housekeeper was nothing if not determined once she
made her mind up about something. She threw the housekeeper a quick
look at the sight of the unsteadiness in Harper’s gait as he walked
toward the sitting room.

“
Food and rest,” Mrs Able murmured quietly.

Arrabella nodded and hurried after Harper. It had been agreed
that for the sake of Arrabella’s reputation, Mrs Able would remain
at the vicarage while Harper was in residence. It was only a
stone’s throw away from her own tiny cottage on the other side of
the church anyway and the housekeeper had positively insisted that
she help look after him. Arrabella suspected that Mrs Able was
rather taken with Harper, and waited to see what she would rustle
up for him to eat because people the housekeeper liked usually got
spoiled rotten.

“
Do you remember what happened?”

Harper
took a moment to settle the blanket over his knees while he
contemplated whether to tell her or not, but then decided that
there was no point in keeping her in the dark. She knew practically
all of it anyway, just not what had happened in Moldton
earlier.

“
I remember everything.” He briefly recounted everything as
far as he could remember.

“
Joseph is going to keep an eye on the grounds here for us. I
don’t know if you are aware, but his fields run along the back of
the garden. He has some sheep there and needs to feed, so will drop
in when he is there. Your brother, Angus, also said that he is
going to make a few enquiries to see if there are any strangers
around Moldton at the moment. They said that they would drop in at
some point and see you tomorrow.”

“
What about you, Arrabella? How are you?”

“
I am fine. I wanted to apologise for what happened the other
night.”

“
It is entirely my fault. A lot has happened in a short space
of time, and it is not all nice,” Harper sighed.

“
I know, but I was rather enjoying trying to find the
register. It is a shame that it went missing before you had the
chance to find the information you wanted.” She jerked and stared
at him for a moment. “I was going to tell you –,” she rose and left
the room only to reappear moments later with a bunch of
keys.

“
Please don’t tell me that they are the spare set of keys to
the church.” He groaned when Arrabella nodded slowly. “Where were
they?”

“
Sitting in the middle of the desk in the study,” she placed
them carefully on the table at his elbow. He didn’t reach out to
pick them up, merely glared at them for a moment before he turned
to look at her.

“
Was the door to the house locked when they
reappeared?”

Arrabella frowned and studied him. “No, I am afraid not. I
lock the door when I am here, but then I am not the only one who
uses the house.”

Sensing
Harper’s question, she called to Mrs Able.

“
Oh, no dear, I don’t bother locking the door when there is
just me here. I don’t have the time to keep running to answer the
door whenever someone calls by. Besides this is Hambley Wood, not
Skipton,” the housekeeper declared firmly.